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This will bring possibility to run userspace driven NIC teaming. There are some features not supported by bonding are supported by Team driver, for example:

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Team Driver provides userspace driven NIC Teaming. In addition to that there are some new features in Team Driver that are not available in bonding. For example:

Summary

Owner

Current status

Targeted release: Fedora 18

Last updated: 2012-07-18

Percentage of completion: 90%

Detailed Description

The purpose of the Team driver is to provide a mechanism to team multiple NICs (ports) into one logical one (teamdev) at L2 layer. The process is called "channel bonding", "Ethernet bonding", "channel teaming", "link aggregation", etc. This is already implemented in the Linux kernel by the bonding driver.

One thing to note is that Team driver project does try to provide the similar functionality as the bonding driver, however architecturally it is quite different from bonding driver. Team driver is modular, userspace driven, very lean and efficient, and it does have some distinct advantages over bonding. The way Team is configured differs dramatically from the way bonding is.

This feature consists of two parts:

kernel module (modules). They are already part of Fedora 18 kernel package.

userspace library (libteam package) and daemon (teamd package).

Benefit to Fedora

Team Driver provides userspace driven NIC Teaming. In addition to that there are some new features in Team Driver that are not available in bonding. For example:

load balancing for LACP

separate per-port link monitoring setup

port priorities and stickiness

IPv6 Neighbor Solicitation/Neighbor Advertisement link monitoring

Scope

Team driver is quite isolated, and does not impact other areas. It does not touch any existing things.

How To Test

Install "teamd" package first. You need two network interfaces for this basic test. In case their names are not "eth1" and "eth2", please adjust the config file.

Documentation

Release Notes

Fedora 18 includes Team Driver which provides a possibility to team multiple network interfaces together so they act like a single network interface. This extends teaming possibilities provided by existing bonding driver. It also provides userspace driven, modular alternative to bonding driver.